Chapter 2

A Village to Nowhere

The world spun. It was the kind of spinning you only experience when everything changes instantly, like when you’re a passenger in a car and you fall asleep without realising, waking somewhere drastically different. Top that sensation off with a hangover from a week-long bender and you will understand the kind of disorientation I was experiencing.

Congratulations, you have safely fast travelled to your destination.

A second ago, I’d been sitting in Varla’s office accepting her offer to organise my trip, laughing at the fast travel mistranslation. Now, I was in the back of an empty wagon, stolen from the Skyrim intro, outside a log warehouse that was surrounded by a whole lot of small log houses that looked like they came from a pioneering film set. Woodsmoke and manure filled my every breath along with a fair amount of something sour, making the experience uniquely horrible.

I grabbed my forehead and turned, trying to gain my bearings and limit my nausea and migraine. I spotted six more wagons in front of the one I occupied. They were all positioned at the edge of a large turning bay in front of the warehouse. The drivers were seated against the far warehouse wall sharing lunch, chatting, and making jokes.

Opposite the warehouse, across the dirt road, were more of the little log houses. I heard metal being hammered beyond the dwellings and could see a line of black smoke above the rooves. There were more houses to my left and a palisade and gate to my right. I was in some sort of medieval village—and a small one, judging by the size of the palisade I could see above the buildings.

What the hell was going on?

The prompt flashed one more time then began to fade.

Congratulations, you have safely fast travelled to your destination.

I finally read the prompt.

Oops.

It may not have been a mistranslation.

I blinked and checked my surroundings a second time. I was still in some random village.

Oh, shit.

The cat from the office leapt up onto the back of the wagon and casually jumped onto my lap, purring. I tensed as he steadied himself, remembering its snide, condescending attitude. He gazed up at me with wide, friendly eyes, before lifting his leg to put his little paw on my chest. He raised himself up and gently rubbed his face against my cheek, sliding warm soft fur against my skin.

Was this a different cat? This one didn’t seem like an asshole.

A whisper from a voice too deep for its size filled my ear.

“Do not reply and give me away. These fools believe I am a cat and we need it to stay that way. Collect your baggage and follow me out of the village. We need to talk in private before you open your foolish mouth and ruin anything further than you already have, you absolute imbecile.”

Okay, same cat.

The cat stepped away and leapt off the back of the wagon. I gave myself a shake, which didn’t help my nausea, and realised I wasn’t wearing the robes Varla had given me. Instead, I wore a scratchy shirt and trousers that looked like they came from a Goodwill reject pile. I added the change of clothes to the long list of things confusing me as I climbed to my feet.

It took a bit more effort to stand than I was used to. The previous owner of my body really should have eaten more salads or gone for a run once in a while. I was about fifty pounds heavier than I had ever been. I picked up the leather backpack, since it was the only item in the wagon with me, and threw it over my shoulder before climbing down.

The cat waited in the middle of the gate twenty yards away. I started walking towards him, dazed by the situation. I hope he had some answers.

The young guard sitting in the tower to the side of the gate looked down as I approached and snorted. “Not even here for five minutes and you’re leaving.” He chuckled at his own joke. “I don’t blame you, Arnold. It’s a smart decision.”

I focused on the guard in the tower the way Varla taught me to less than an hour ago. Words appeared above his head.

Guardsmen Brill

I read his class and name. While floating words had seemed kind of cool to start with, it was quickly losing its power to inspire wonder. What I was seeing was basically just a fancy name tag. I was used to wearing one at tournaments, having strangers knowing my name, so this was no different than that.

The guard didn’t seem to care if I replied. I grunted a response and kept walking, trying to organise my feelings. I’d been in this world for less than three hours, and before I received the ring I hadn’t been able to communicate with anyone. First I was angry and confused, and then I was excited and confused, now I was just confused. Confused was good. Confused kept me distracted. It stopped me from being overwhelmed by the reality of my situation.

Just beyond the gate were dozens of tiny log cabins, even less impressive than those inside the village. I could see thirty or so people working in vegetable fields, tending crops. Every one of them looked like they had seen better days. They wore clothes that were threadbare with signs of mending. Many of the youngest children didn’t even have those. Instead, they ran around clothed in sacks stamped with some sort of company name in a language that didn’t make sense.

It was all just a bit too much. I dropped my gaze, shutting out the world around me, and followed the cat out the gate in search of answers.

***

“Once again, it is left up to me to pull the poor human out of their ignorance,” the cat said, deep voice rumbling as it finally broke its silence. It looked at me and then flicked its tail disdainfully.

We’d followed the outer wall around the village to the far side, where there were only a few dozen houses pressed up against the palisade and a flat grassy plain that stretched for miles before stopping at a forest. An old dirt road cut through the centre of it all, passing under the closed second gate in one direction and heading towards the distant forest in the other. The cat had scampered down it toward the forest without saying a word, taking us past burnt-out barns and houses until we were more than a mile from the village.

He hadn’t answered any of my whispered questions or spoken until now, which was probably why my response wasn’t the politest. “What the hell happened to me, cat? Wait, first of all, where am I?”

The cat glared at me. “I’m going to ignore the cat comment this time since you are clearly distressed, but do not test my patience. I am not your pet. I am not your cat. I am a familiar. And you are not my equal. Remember that.”

“Ah, sorry, let me rephrase that. What the hell happened to me, familiar?”

The familiar’s glare intensified. “You, oh ignorant one, decided to accept the archbishop’s offer to fast travel. This is the village of Blackwood, more than ten weeks’ travel from where we were.”

I frowned. Ten weeks’ travel. I did ten weeks’ travel in the blink of an eye. Damn, that was kind of cool. My frown turned into a stupid grin.

“So we like, teleported here?”

In retrospect, I probably should have asked if the prompt was a mistranslation before accepting. But how the hell could I have known fast travel was real? It seemed too far-fetched to consider it anything more than a joke.

“We…like…did nothing of the sort. For the past ten weeks, I have had to sit next your vacant gaze as we travelled to the far edge of the kingdom.”

“Huh, we travelled here?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you said we fast travelled.”

“I said you fast travelled.”

The stupid grin fell away as quickly as it appeared. I blinked, trying to draw some form of logic from his statement that fit with my life experience. I didn’t find any. Our puzzle pieces didn’t match. “You’re confusing me.”

The familiar chuckled, dropping the hostility. “You need to become used to that feeling now if you wish to save yourself from added distress.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

“Fine, I’ll explain,” he said, rolling his eyes. “From your perspective, no time passed between the moment you accepted the archbishop’s offer and the moment you arrived at your destination. She decided to give you an easier route, letting you ignore the discomforts of life—at the cost of it.”

That sounded bad.

“What do you mean, ‘at the cost of it’?”

The familiar started to roll its eyes, but then sighed instead. “It took you ten weeks to get here. Those are ten weeks you will never get back. In other words, you have utterly wasted ten weeks of your life. Ten weeks in which I could have been educating you. Now we are at the edge of nowhere, on the other side of the kingdom, and you are just as dangerously ignorant of how you will function here as you were when we departed.”

I looked around, taking in the sad scattered details of abandoned farmhouses and barns, which were mostly burnt-out husks in the late stages of collapse. The fat herds of cattle and sheep roaming the plains were less sad, but even they were few and far between.

I turned my gaze further afield, looking to the dense wild forest that was so overgrown you couldn’t see more than fifty feet into it. Beyond it to the north and south, past any sign of civilisation, lay a line of jagged hills slowly curving east. The hills went as far as I could see before disappearing over the horizon.

The view was not to my taste. I definitely didn’t know how to function in this type of environment. This could be a problem. “Couldn’t we have gone somewhere less depressing and rustic?”

The familiar nodded. “Certainly, and that was my plan, but like an utter fool you went and fell for the archbishop’s manipulation.”

I blame the high level of disorientation for my slowness because the scope of what he said finally hit me. “Wait, stop. Are you saying Varla intentionally made me lose ten weeks of my life?”

“Yes. Obviously you can’t do this to someone accidentally. Varla knew you wouldn’t know what fast travel was, so she made the offer. Having you fast travel allowed her to secretly whisk you away, establishing a clean escape through hidden passages without compromising the integrity of their security. It was done for our benefit as much as hers. And while I can understand the necessity, it means we must make up the time we lost.”

I stared horrified. First I died, now this. “Are you really going to wave away the fact that Varla cost me ten weeks of my life?” I asked through gritted teeth, trying not to yell.

He nodded. “Yes. There is no point arguing over the incident or throwing blame. You were ignorant of what fast travel entailed and she needed security. Her manipulation—while cruel—was necessary. And your idiocy for succumbing to that manipulation, thereby leaving me babysitting you for ten weeks is forgivable, because you were ignorant of what fast travel means.”

His tone near the end contradicted his words. His tone suggested the forgiveness he claimed to feel towards me might not actually be forgiveness, but a mantra he repeatedly told himself. A mantra that basically said that no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t hold my ignorance against me. But he really wanted to. So much so that he couldn’t hide his feelings.

Note to self: for a healthy relationship with the cat, never admit that I might have known what fast travel was before I accepted. Even if, it was only an inkling. “Couldn’t you have done something?” My new question held less anger than the last.

He shook his head. “Once you agreed to fast travel, I had no control over your destination. As I said, you are dangerously ignorant of our world. That is why I intend to lock you away in the inn and fix this. To do even that, I must give you enough knowledge to answer questions even an ignorant incarnate would know.”

“Like the name of this village.”

“Exactly. Now, before you enact some other foolish action which leaves you comatose for the rest of your days, let us have a frank discussion on what you do and do not know.”

The cat’s condescending tone was seriously annoying me. “I’m not an idiot.”

He sighed and somehow managed to facepalm with a paw. “Perhaps not, but you are ignorant to a dangerous degree. Our first priority while we are here is to remain inconspicuous. You must not draw attention to us. My enemies could kill you with a wave of their hand if they find you before they are dealt with.”

“Fine, what do I need to know to stay safe?”

“For now, it is easier if you let me ask the questions. What was your level of education where you came from? Please tell me you could at least read and write.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I can read and write.”

“You mean, you could read and write. The only reason we can converse is because of the ring you wear. Our languages are not the same, and that ring does not apply to written text outside of the prompts you receive.”

Shit. I hadn’t thought about that…but then again, it’s not like I’d had a lot of time to consider any of these issues. I was being constantly bombarded by new revelations. “Okay, fair enough, I could read and write. I could do mathematics…which I’m guessing might be a bit different here too.”

“Let me simplify the question. How many years have you studied for?”

I could answer that. “Between the ages of five and eighteen.”

“So thirteen years, during your developmental period. You would barely be a novice if you were a wizard child, but as a farmer, you are quite educated. That is good because you are going to have to study our world if you want to succeed.”

I blinked, looking around at the medieval setting I’d found myself in. “You know about developmental periods?”

“Yes, as Varla said, you are not unique as an incarnate. We have several appear each year in our kingdom alone. If you have any area of expertise from your world that you can pass onto ours, you could find yourself becoming a very wealthy man. But before we talk about that, we need to establish your cover.”

“Okay. What do I call you if someone asks?”

The familiar froze like a cat who had been spooked. After a few seconds, it gave itself a shake and took a slow breath. “I had an alias with Varla, but she chose not to tell you so you would not accidentally give me away. You must choose a new one.”

“Why can’t you just tell me your name?”

“I am a familiar,” he said slowly. “We cannot share our name, even a false name. It is part of our nature. You will have to choose for me…but if you dare call me Soot or Mittens, I will kill you in your sleep.”

I didn’t even have to think about it. He was a sassy, angry, talking black cat that belonged to a wizard. “I’ll call you Salem.”

Salem tilted his head to the side in thought before nodding. “That sounds acceptable, but why that name?”

“It’s what you remind me of. Salem is the name of a warlock from a show I watched with my sister as a kid. He was turned into a black cat for five hundred years as punishment.”

Salem chuckled. “Yes, your presence certainly is a punishment. I like the comparison. Now that that is sorted, there are a few simple things you must know before we return and secure a room at the local inn. As I said, this village is called Blackwood. It is the north-easternmost village in the kingdom. That forest in front of us is The Wild Woods. Three years ago, an army of goblins stormed out of it and invaded the village, killing most of the villagers. Those that survived and still remain are too poor to leave. Blackwood has few villagers and little trade. There is almost no chance of us being discovered here if we are careful. Now, I developed a backstory for you that is quite simple to follow. If anyone asks you where you were incarnated, tell them it was in Welk, in the Brotherless Monastery.”

“Why there?”

“The monastery is a sanctuary. They do not say who is or has ever been inside their walls. However, they keep the law as well as any other temple.”

“Welk, Brotherless Monastery. Got it. What else?”

“You have been there for three years learning about our world which is the longest you can take sanctuary there. You haven’t acclimated well to being incarnate. So when it came time for you to leave, you decided to go somewhere that was remote and sparsely populated to ease yourself into life outside.”

“Okay, that’s pretty simple as far as a backstory goes.”

“It was what I thought you could handle in a short space of time. The 1,000 silver pieces is at the bottom of your backpack. There is a smaller, less conspicuous purse near the top. Use that to pay the bill in the inn. Do not pull out the larger purse where others can see, or freely offer up the information that you are incarnate. We do not need that sort of attention. However, those with higher intelligence and class abilities will be able to see what you are regardless of whether or not you advertise. When they bring it up, do not deny it.”

I pulled my backpack off and started riffling through it. “Do I have anything else besides this pack?”

“No.”

I found the small purse under some dirty changes of clothes, and opened it, looking inside. There were several dozen hexagonal silver coins and hundreds of copper. “What’s the conversion rate for currency?”

“I was about to cover that. Fifty coppers pieces make a silver noble and there are hundred silver nobles to a gold crown. A bar of gold is equal to a hundred crowns.”

I picked up a copper piece and experienced an indescribable sensation. “This feels weird.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t feel like I’m holding copper. But it also does feel like copper. No, that’s not right. It feels like it has the potential to be copper.” I dropped the coin back in the purse and wiped my hand on my trousers. “Something about that coin is wrong.”

Salem sighed again. “Nothing about the coin is wrong. You are simply feeling its magical potential, like anyone can. If you pick up a silver noble you will notice that the feeling is stronger.”

I picked up a silver noble. The feeling that the coin wasn’t a coin returned, and it was stronger this time, just like he said. I dropped it back into the purse. “Why do you have weird feeling coins?”

“Do you need me to explain how our economy works right this minute or can you wait until we have a room in the inn?”

“Just tell me why they are weird.”

Salem sighed. He seemed to do that a lot. “Do you study physics in your world?” His tone had turned patronizing and peevish.

“Yes.”

“Do you understand the concept of potential energy—such as when you lift a stone off the ground it holds the potential energy to return it to the ground?”

“Yes.”

“Think of the coins you are holding as potential magical energy. It is waiting in that state to be converted into something else.”

“Like what?”

“The village behind us is a simple example. Establishing it cost the potential magical energy trapped within 25,000 gold crowns. Once that energy was expended the coins vanished. Each level of expansion cost additional gold.”

I frowned. “How do you still have money if your coins keep disappearing?”

“There are classes that create currency and classes that use it, so the sum total of all the coins in the kingdom fluctuates. On good years, people produce more coins than they use. When this has happened for several consecutive years the kingdom can try to expand. That’s how villages like Blackwood are built. Sometimes the kingdom recuperates its investment, and other times, like here, for instance, they lose it. Now, that is all an overly simplified version of how the system actually functions, but it is all the time we have to discuss this. We need to get a room at the inn.”

“Why are you so grouchy?”

Salem glared at me. “I am grouchy because your ignorance has taken me to a backwater level three village in the middle of nowhere. There is no library, no restaurants, no theatre, and there isn’t a teleportation circle anywhere within half a week’s travel. I have access to none of the comforts of civilisation. And now you can’t even do a simple task like securing us a room at the inn so I can educate you the way I should have been doing for the past ten weeks. That is why I am grouchy.”

That was fair, I guess.

“Okay, let’s get a room.”

We turned around and started walking back to the village. Now that I knew the village's history, I could understand why so much of everything looked abandoned, why every structure was almost pressed up against the palisade. The people here were scared.

I’d been through a ghost town with my parents when I was a kid. The factory in the town had closed forty years earlier and most people had left. There were abandoned houses and empty shops. This reminded me a lot of that.

The guard in the tower smiled when we walked back through the gate. “How was the tour of the village?”

“Short,” I said.

He chuckled. “Well, that is because we have plenty opportunity for expansion.”

“More than most places. I’m looking for an inn.”

“You will only find the one. The other closed last year. Just go to the main square and you will see it. Gretel might be a village appointed innkeeper, but she runs a good place, cheap one too.”

“Thanks, Brill.”

“You are welcome, Arnold.”

The village inside the wall was barely two hundred yards from start to finish. A massive warehouse was to the left of the gate, with what looked like workshops to the right. I could hear hammering coming from behind some houses and saw a sign that had a hammer hitting an anvil. I took a wild guess and figured it was probably a smithy.

Salem led me down the main street. The outer industrial area gave way to housing and a few small shops. Most of the shops were closed, however, the entrances boarded up. The line of abandoned buildings gave way to a large open square that was cobbled.

There was a fountain in the middle with clean, clear water. A building that looked like it might be a guard’s barracks sat on the far side. A boarded-up wooden temple with a faded yellow serpent image above the entrance was on the left side of the square, and a large stone house—which was very nearly a manor with its own wall and iron gate—was on the right. The inn was the building closest to the gate. It had three floors with whitewash weatherboarding and a thatched roof.

I only knew that it was the inn because Salem headed straight for the door, pressing his shoulder against the wood to indicate we needed to go inside.

I entered what could easily have been mistaken for an Irish pub. There were a lot of polished dark wooden panels and furniture. Opposite the door was a bar with a wall of bottles behind it and a countertop that had seen better days. Between that and the door were tables and chairs. A large fireplace sat along one wall, and a small stage sat against the other, beside a staircase that led to higher levels. Apart from the lanterns fixed on the wall, the interior looked almost modern.

A cougar of a woman stood behind the bar reading a book. She had curly red hair with a touch of grey and a few freckles on her cheeks. She looked up and smiled at me as I closed the door. She had a dress that was a tad too tight and a neckline that was invitingly low. She was eyeing me up more than I was her. “Welcome to Gretel’s Inn. I’m the illustrious Gretel. How may I be of service, Arnold?”

I crossed the room. “I need a room for a few nights for me and Salem.” I nodded to the familiar to show who I was talking about.

Gretel’s smile faltered as I got closer and she dropped the flirtatious tone. “The cat is welcome, but if you are staying in my inn, you will need to have a bath before you use my sheets.”

The cleanliness of the place and her comments made me notice that the sour smell, which had been following me around, didn’t belong to the village, but was in fact me.

My smile went a little shaky. “A bath would be great. Do you have a bucket and some soap that I could use to wash my clothes? And maybe somewhere to hang them up?”

“I can have your clothes laundered for you…but if you are a bit tight on funds to pay the five coppers, I can sell you a bar of soap for three and lend you a wash bucket and show you where to get some water.”

“I’ll take the bar of soap. How much do I owe you?”

“A room costs eleven coppers a night, which includes breakfast. A hot bath will cost you three coppers. A cold bath will cost you two. Our water comes from a deep well, so I suggest the hot. Dinner is five coppers, but that includes a couple of ales. House ale is one copper a jug which is a passable local brew. If you want something branded, that will set you back a copper a tankard.”

“So, twenty-eight coppers for two nights, a hot bath, and a bar of soap,” I said before she could list off any more prices.

Gretel smiled. “I took you for a farmer.”

I tried to hide my disappointment. “I am a farmer.”

“That’s a surprise—most of the ones around here can’t add in their heads. That puts you a step above the locals.”

I nodded as I put my backpack down and opened the leather buckles to get inside. I’d tucked my smaller purse back under the dirty clothes which I noticed smelled even worse than the ones I was wearing.

I counted out twenty-eight coppers and handed them over.

Gretel counted them again and then put them in her apron pocket. “I can show you to your room…or I can show you where you can do your laundry while I fix that bath? I strongly suggest the second.”

I glanced down at Salem. He was glaring at me. Glancing at him, however, brought my nose closer to my armpit—which chose for me. “Laundry first.”

A sharp pain burned my ankle and I looked down to see Salem pulling back his mouth from a nasty bite.

Gretel eyed Salem uncertainly. “Is he always like that?” I could hear the hesitation in her tone.

“No, he just hates water and recognises most of the words associated with it,” I said, fumbling through a lie. “He’ll behave once I’ve finished my laundry and have bathed.”

“He’d better. This way.”

Gretel led me to a hallway and the back of the inn. Halfway down, I froze. There was a map of North America on the wall that went from floor to ceiling. Varla had repeatedly told me I was in another universe, a different version of Earth than where I came from, but that hadn’t made its way into reality the way seeing this map did. I was looking at North America, but everything about it was wrong. A forest took up almost the entire centre and east coast of the continent. The only signs of civilisation in the north were along the west coast near the ocean. Texas and Mexico contained hundreds of cities making up the bulk of the kingdom, but everything else had a “here be dragons” vibe to it, with names like The Widows Mountains and The Valley of Tears.

Gretel saw why I had stopped and walked back. She pointed to a red dot of paint that might have been in the northeastern part of Oregon or maybe Washington—though the topography certainly didn’t match. Judging by the ring of hills, it looked like the dot was on the inner edge of a giant meteor crater, which explained the two lines of jagged hills I’d seen beyond the forest.

“That’s us.” She moved her finger a couple of hundred miles north through a forest into what would have been Washington or Canada. “That’s the elven border.” She then followed a series of mountains I couldn’t name. “The western dwarven mountain kingdoms.”

She waved me over to the next map.

This one was more detailed and mostly showed Oregon and the crater area. It also had a series of hexagons overlaying everything that kind of reminded me of Settlers of Catan, D&D, and a few older video games I’d played. She pointed to a small village surrounded by forest in the northeastern section again. A small path seemed to cut through the forest and ring of hills to the village.

“That’s us. I know it looks like we are close to those hedonistic elves on the other map, but we’re actually quite far away. Now, if you look over here, you will see a map of the village.” She led me to the next map. This one showed the village dead centre in the middle of a hexagon. There were houses, barns, every last little detail. “This is what we used to look like before the attack. For decades this map hung in the main room, being updated as Blackwood changed, but it depresses me to look at now.”

Looking at the map, I could see what the village had been like. Salem and I had apparently walked east when we’d gone outside the village. There had been over a hundred farms there. Now there was only a few dozen against the wall. The same was true for the north and south of the village. The only place that looked similar to how it was now was the western side, and a quarter of that was a small woods.

“I can tell you about the village’s history over dinner if you are interested,” Gretel offered.

Salem pulled at my trouser leg with his mouth.

I glanced down and then back at the innkeeper. “Maybe in a few days, once I’m washed and settled.”

She smiled and tapped her forehead theatrically. “Right, the washing. Follow me.”

She turned and headed for the door at the end of the hallway. It connected to the back of the inn, where there was a large open area next to the stable. She found me a new bar of harsh-smelling soap and a wash bucket, and showed me the washing line and where to get water, and then she left me to it.

Over my lacklustre gaming career, I’d stayed at my fair share of discount motels, places where the washing machines and fridges didn’t work, so cleaning my clothes with a bar of soap in a bathroom sink wasn’t exactly a new experience for me. I quickly began working the smell and stains out of the first of the two changes of clothes stored in my pack.

As I finished the first set, a prompt appeared, and a halo of light surrounded me, making me glow like a Christmas tree.

Well done, you have successfully cleaned a set of clothing to a fine standard with a wash bucket and gained a new tool proficiency. You can now boast that you can use a wash bucket as well as any Novice.

Salem scowled at me, looked around, saw nobody, and then scowled at me some more.

For a second, I almost told him that I didn’t know that the whole tool proficiency thing was going to happen simply by cleaning clothes, but then I realised that my ignorance was precisely why he wanted to talk to me alone in the first place, and I’d be supporting his argument. So I wisely said, “Sorry,” and then shut up.

***

“So, basically, don’t accept any prompt that will make things too easy for me. If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is,” I said quietly as I soaked away weeks’ worth of grime. The tub was surprisingly big and the small bar of soap Gretel had sold me held a pleasant aroma, compared to the one I’d used on my clothes.

Salem sighed. “If you need to dumb it down, then yes: if it seems too good to be true then it probably is. There are exceptions, of course, but it will take time for me to teach you the nuances of how everything works.”

“How much time?”

“Three days should be enough that you don’t accidentally kill yourself or others, but it will take weeks for a proper understanding of the basics.”

I nodded my head. “So, in three days, I can go out and start training to reach level 100. Do you have any pointers?”

“Don’t bother. Varla didn’t directly lie to you, but she didn’t give you the whole truth. The only farmers that ever reach 100 have old family money or are somehow useful to a nobleman or merchant. No one makes it on their own. To gather that much experience by yourself would take two lifetimes, and the cost of purchasing the experience is more than a farmer can earn in ten.”

“Wait, you can buy experience?”

“Of course that’s the only part you heard. And to answer your question, yes you can buy experience. I’ll explain why when we get to my lecture on leveling. And before you ask, you don’t have nearly enough money to purchase the experience required to get you to 100. At the bare minimum, it will cost you 2,500 gold crowns, and no one sells experience for the bare minimum.”

“What about that fact that I’m an incarnate? You said we sometimes bring information from our world that is quite valuable in yours. Maybe I can make money that way?”

“That is a possibility. What did you do for employment in your world?”

“Well, for the last six months, I’ve been studying economics and accounting, but before that, I was a semi-pro gamer for nine years.”

“What is a semi-pro gamer?”

“It means I was paid to play games.”

“And you think that will help you make money in our world?”

“Well, your laws kind of sound like what we would call ‘mechanics’ in some of the games I used to play. It was sort of my job to understand those mechanics and learn how to take advantage of them, finding weaknesses that could be used to my team’s advantage.”

“Ah, in our world, the scholar class fills this function. They study each class, finding each method for gaining experience more easily, and sell that information to the class they specialise in.”

“We have a thing called walkthroughs that people read to do the same thing. But what I’m talking about is more specialised. It was my job to find ways no one had ever thought of doing something, adding weird quirks together to create unexpected results.”

“Oh, you were an exploitationist. That can be quite profitable if you are successful.”

“How profitable?”

“Very in some cases; exploitationists receive a 25% experience bonus when anyone uses their method to gain experience. Of course, that will only apply to your class, as you cannot receive experience from another class.”

“That’s what I will do then.”

“You will fail. Scholars and exploitationists have devoted centuries to discovering new ways of gaining experience. New methods for exploitation are now all small discoveries, and rare.”

“Alright, maybe I won’t do that. So we’ll hang out in our room for a few days while you teach me the basics and then we can go buy a few weapons and start leveling.”

Salem sighed again. “Why do you need weapons?”

“To kill monsters.”

“And why are you planning to kill monsters?”

“So I can level.”

“Of course, it is so obvious. Except you are neither a hunter, a warrior, or an adventurer, so killing monsters will gain you nothing but the loot they drop.”

I stared at Salem over the edge of the tub. “What…are you saying I can’t level by killing monsters?”

“What part of the class farmer indicates to you that you should be slaying monsters?”

The uneasy feeling was returning. I could sense the curveball. “No, no, no…you get experience from killing monsters. It’s the rules.”

“Perhaps in your world, but here, in our world, farmers gain experience by farming. This includes the planting of crops and the raising of livestock, but not the slaying of monsters.”

I scowled at Salem. “Bullshit. You’ve got three days to teach me the basics and then we are going monster hunting.”